Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last Friday the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment delivered a Minister's statement about the Aurora College foundational review and later tabled a letter written by the Standing Committee on Social Development. Both concerned the planned review. The Minister also said, and I quote from the unedited Hansard: "I appreciate committee's advice about the timelines and have decided to extend the timeline."

I am wary of arguing who said what. Nevertheless, as a member of this committee, I must object. As the Member for Yellowknife Centre has already said, we're not interested in further delay. Quite the opposite. We're concerned with expense, staff and student wellbeing, project scope, and college stability, tensions colouring this project from the start.

Mr. Speaker, without concerted effort from Regular Members, ECE would have already eliminated the Teacher Education Program and the Social Work Diploma Program, programs treasured by students, teachers, alumni, and the college board, not to mention critical to meeting labour needs.

The board's own minutes show its unease at how ECE made major budget decisions without consulting them, before they were fired altogether.

Now the department plans to spend nearly $400,000 reviewing the college? Teacher and social worker intake is frozen and the board is gone. What about their experiences? Yes, the committee was able to review and comment on the RFP before it went out, and to give credit where credit is due, the department adopted some of our recommendations. Then, Mr. Speaker, months went by until the RFP was awarded to a company specializing in "accounting, consulting, and tax." Is that what's best for our only college?

One of my biggest challenges with the review was that ECE planned to run it out of sync with the budgeting cycle, leaving programs in limbo while next year's budget was planned without the insight the review would supposedly bring. Well, guess what? Extending the timeline doesn't solve that problem. The teacher and social work programs, and the college itself, remain trapped in limbo for another year. Will these programs wither on the vine? What can current and prospective students plan for?

The Minister said that, when it came to college programming, "there was little agreement on what to do." Well, Mr. Speaker, at least we can agree on that. I'll have questions later for the Minister. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.